


Let the Water Hit

by calrissian18



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adderall Abuse, M/M, Warning in Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He closed his eyes and nearly gave in, gave up, opened his mouth and let the water hit when he realized he would die if he did that – there was no question of <i>if</i> anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Water Hit

**Author's Note:**

> There is a trigger warning in the end notes if you need to look. I would ~~beg~~ ~~plead with you~~ ask that you not do if you don't have to.
> 
> There is also some blather about the research I've done for the fic as well.
> 
> I count this as my first real Teen Wolf fic because technically I wrote it before everything else, it's also the only one I haven't written in a day - sadly true, so please be kind.
> 
> This was written for Round 3 of [werewolfbigbang](http://werewolfbigbang.livejournal.com) on lj.
> 
> Also, the art here was drawn by the amazingly talented fuckyeah. I know the fic will not appeal to everyone, but the art sure as hell will so please take the time to tell fuckyeah (La_Temperanza) how much you enjoyed it [here](http://fuckyeah.livejournal.com/292298.html)!
> 
>  
> 
> Did you want to [stalk me](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/)? Because I'm on board with that.

_“You know when you’re drowning you don’t actually inhale until right before you black out. It’s called voluntary apnea. It’s like no matter how much you’re freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel like your head’s exploding. Then when you finally do let it in, that’s when it stops hurting. It’s not scary anymore, it’s… it’s actually kind of peaceful.”_

_…_

_“I’m fine.  Yeah, aside from the not sleeping, the jumpiness, the constant, overwhelming fear that something terrible’s about to happen.  It’s called hyper vigilance. The persistent feeling of being under threat.  Maybe it’s not just a feeling though, right, it’s… it’s like it’s a panic attack.  Y’know, like I can’t even breathe.”_

_“Like you’re drowning.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“So, if you’re drowning, and you’re trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last moment… what if you chose to not open your mouth? To not let the water hit?”_

_~ Excerpt from Teen Wolf 2x11 - Battlefield_

 

 

Stiles’s leg jounced, banging out a frenetic rhythm under his desk.  He rubbed a sweat-lined palm over his mouth, his lips squashing down under the pressure.  His eyes were strained, bleary and eager for rest but he kept at it, scrolling through chat logs and buried web pages.  His back was curled over in a ‘C’ and his neck was starting to twinge in pain.  He printed out another dozen pages on pagan rituals and leaned back in his seat.

He was exhausted, could feel it in his bones. The weight of sleeplessness and endless lines of antiquated jargon settled heavily in every muscle.  He eyed the bottle of Adderall and popped another 20mg, his mouth still dry even after gulping down water like a man dying of thirst.  That made 90mg in the last 24 hours.  It would be well worth it when, tomorrow, he met with the pack and they could exile the witches once and for all.  They were a nasty bunch, not evil per se, but criminal enough.

Even Lydia couldn’t hang when it came to their cutting little remarks.  She had been the first to try to make inroads with the coven, dabbling in magic and all that herself but when they’d lopped off a chunk of her hair “for a spell,” all her goodwill – the little she’d had to begin with – had dried up.

The pack had been left on edge, hackles raised, and Stiles was sure they were as eager to get rid of them as he was.  The Alpha pack was still circling and they hardly needed this added complication as the cherry on top of their craptastic sundae.

 

* * *

 

Derek was playing the Big Bad Alpha while his betas squabbled over which tack to take.  He watched them, arms folded, expression grim, as they sniped at one another and poked at weaknesses and past mistakes with relish.  It wasn’t until Stiles stood up and said, “Whichever way it happens, we need to be sure I can get to the center of it,” that the betas quieted down, reason being spoken for the first time in full minutes.  “If I can’t get the protection sigils drawn in time then there’s a good chance, no matter how we go about it, it will cause a backlash of epic proportions.”  Stiles flailed his arms a bit for effect while quiet muttering rose up in the wake of his declaration.

Derek cut it off with a growl.  “You have them?”  He was staring at Stiles, his head tilted to the side like he was trying to decipher a particularly complex code.

Stiles shoved the pages he’d printed off the night before at him, his chest puffing out a little with a pride he couldn’t help but feel.  They were organized in order of importance and highlighted neon pink so all the relevant facts would jump out to someone who wasn’t familiar with old world rituals.  Which Derek wasn’t.   Nor should he be.  It certainly wasn’t because Stiles thought Derek was dumb; he didn’t.  He just had a real understanding of exactly how many other balls Derek had in the air at any given time.  He actually thought it might be that understanding that had allowed them to get as close as they had over the past year.

Derek flipped through the pages with a frown and looked up when he found the diagrams he was looking for.  “You won’t be going.”

Stiles was almost nodding, expecting something complimentary or perhaps even encouraging coming out of his mouth that he could readily agree with, when the words registered.  His jaw dropped.  “What do you _mean_ I won’t be going?”  The firm set of Derek’s mouth didn’t so much as twitch.  “This is as much my problem as it yours and I have just as much right to be there as you, or Scott, or _anyone_.”

“I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be there.  I’m saying you won’t be.”  It was a recent thing.  Derek talking calmly, explaining slowly, rather than snarling and talking _over_.  He was trying; Stiles could give him that.  “You can’t take care of yourself as well as I, or Scott, or _anyone_ can.”  He repeated it back in the same inflection, showing Stiles he had been listened to and heard.  “It’s not fair to ask us to divide our attention by having to look after you while doing all the rest.”

Stiles choked on a laugh.  And there’s where all Derek’s diplomatic Alpha speech went to shit.  “Look after me?  _Look after me_?  Where was I when I proved incapable of looking after myself?”

“Stiles.”  Scott stood up from the couch and took a tentative step towards him.  “Derek might be right about this one.”  Stiles breathed in sharply, feeling like a shard of ice had been lodged up under his ribs.  “It is dangerous.  The witches are unpredictable, Lydia can tell you,” he said, jutting out his elbow to where she was sitting on the couch.

“Lydia, who _will_ be going on this little mission with you,” Stiles pointed out through clenched teeth.  Because it wasn’t a question, he knew she’d be there.  And so would Allison.

Scott rubbed the back of his neck.  “Lydia has magic.”

“And _I’m_ a spark!”

“With no real control over his powers,” Scott said with a wince.  But he’d still said it.

Stiles deflated.  “So I’m good enough for the pack when it’s research but anything else and I need to be _looked after_?”

Scott’s expression was stricken.  “Stiles, it isn’t like that and you know it.  I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Stiles scoffed, a huffy little sound he was embarrassed to have made.  He could feel the exhaustion and Adderall abuse catching up to him, swarming over him like ants trying to bring down much larger prey.  It was making his eyes itch.  They’d be watering soon, entirely out of his control, and he had to leave before he made an even bigger fool of himself.  “It’s amazing how condescending you all are with your concern,” he bit out, turning his glare on each of them in turn.  They all shifted uncomfortably but no one spoke up for him.  Stiles was surprised to find that he’d expected nothing less.

Derek looked like he was holding back a flinch when Stiles turned his angry gaze on him but he held his ground.

“Fine, then.  I’ll leave.”  And it sounded immature and stupid but it was out now and it couldn’t be taken back, only obsessed over that night in his bed when he would think of all the better things he could’ve said.

He had his fingers on the knob of the front door when a large hand closed over his forearm and hauled him back around.  Derek was standing there, looking uncomfortable, but his eyebrows were drawn low and determined.  “Everyone in that room cares about you.”  Derek’s jaw was clenched and it was obviously costing him a lot to say as much.  “You can storm out and make up some scenario in your head where we think of you as lesser somehow, but it’s only because you mean so much to _the pack_ that you’re sitting this one out.”

Derek wasn’t at the point where he could say Stiles mattered to _him_ , which was just as well really.  Stiles wasn’t at the point where he wouldn’t deflect any real emotion with a joke.  He knew the rest of them were probably sitting in the other room, ramrod straight, waiting for one of them to slip up and admit to _feelings_.  Stiles knew, and he thought maybe Derek did too, that that was a long way off for them.

He could appreciate what Derek was trying to say and he attempted to show him even as he pried Derek’s grip from his arm.  He swallowed and stared down at the warped floorboards.  “That’s not the way it works, Derek.”  The words were twisted with a plea that came off more like a whine and he ducked his head a little at the sound of his own voice.  “If I’m pack then I’m involved in all of it, the dangerous stuff and the not-so-dangerous stuff.  If you can’t accept that – if _all_ of you can’t accept that – then, yeah, I guess I’m not _pack_.”

Derek did flinch then and Stiles backed away from him, feeling guilty but knowing at the same time that he was right.  Pack was supposed to mean family and family included the good _and_ the bad.

The cold slapped him across the cheeks the second he opened the door.  It was hard to think of Derek’s home as all that insulated but it was heaps better than the outdoors.  Beacon Hills was close to a record-breaking winter.  In the past three days it had snowed twenty-one inches and the temperature had dropped to twelve degrees that day.  It was supposed to get down to negative three during the night.  Stiles shuffled out to his jeep through the snow and climbed into the driver’s seat, taking a calming breath, silently counting the seconds with each inhale and exhale.  In – _One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five._   Out – _One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five._   It worked well enough and he was feeling less on edge when he slid his key into the ignition.  The jeep rumbled and revved but it didn’t catch.  Stiles sat back and tried twice more before giving in to the inevitable.

Of course his jeep would choose that night of all nights.  He knew the betas, _Derek_ , had probably heard he couldn’t make his punctuating exit by now and would be out to corral him before long.  Stiles couldn’t stand the thought of seeing them now, the sting was too fresh, and they’d agree to whatever he said to keep the peace without changing their opinions about anything if he went back in there.

He slipped out of the car and the door closed with a creaking _thud_.  He wished he’d grabbed a warmer jacket but he hadn’t thought he’d be outside long.  He was wearing his fur-lined hoodie that his aunt-with-horrible-fashion-taste had gotten him last Christmas over a Henley and two over-shirts.  It would be enough to see him home.  He had boots with great tread and jeans over long johns so he was more than prepared.

He veered off the track of Derek’s drive, knowing it’d be too easy to follow him if he took the road – that had to be what they’d expect of their puny human pack member.  He knew his way through the woods well enough by now, even with all the snow, and soon his footfalls would be muffled and his heartbeat slow and steady and his breaths calm and even, so that even Derek wouldn’t be able to follow easily if he wanted.  He could only hope his scent would be lost on the wind, or to the snow and ice.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his red hoodie and walked a slow pace back to his house, climbing over fallen trees and marveling at the undisturbed hills and banks of whitest snow.  The sun was sitting low in the sky and it glistened off the ice.  Stiles stared up at the tree line, up through the break in the canopy and squinted against the brightness of the light seeping through, which was when he heard the creak.

It was sound first and then it was felt as the ground trembled, shifted and broke open beneath his feet. The cold hit his chest like a sledgehammer and Stiles gasped reflexively, the water pouring into his mouth, ice sweeping in through him while it pushed out every bit of warmth he had.  It hit the back of his throat and froze everything it touched all the way down to settle like a block of ice in his stomach.  His head sunk beneath the surface and the weight of his clothes, his boots, dragged him down before he could fight against it.  He stiffened under the ice as the pressure of the lake settled heavy on his chest like he’d been shot with an arrow directly in his heart.  Beneath the ice was nothing but darkness and heat-sapping cold.  He felt weightless, floating in dream space and only the pressure pushing in on all sides and the frigid water that had expertly clawed its way up his calves, under his shirt, over his skin assured him that this was real.

 

 

He could remember when he was seven and he’d watched a documentary about hypothermia on television.  _Two to five minutes_ , his brain chanted.  He had two to five minutes to get out of the water before it became wholly unlikely that he ever would.  He looked up at the ice but he couldn’t find the hole he’d fallen through in the sharp blackness of the water.  It was beautiful and empty and in a very real way Stiles felt completely alone.  There was no one above him, no one waiting to haul him out.  There hadn’t even been birds flitting through the trees and there was nothing in there with him, nothing but dark and cold and fear.

He kicked his feet as much as he could and looked for a dark place where there wasn’t snow sitting over ice.  He pushed up and spotted it.  The place where he’d fallen through.  He broke the surface with a deep gasp and the hyperventilating and chattering started up immediately.  He wasn’t supposed to panic.  Two to five minutes.  He tried to calm his breathing, the way he was meant to, but he hardly felt in control of himself.  His teeth were clacking and he couldn’t stop shivering long enough to move the way he wanted to.

He leaned back to keep his head above water and pursed his lips to make his panting breaths soothe.  In – _One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five._   Out – _One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five._   When he was calm enough, he found the place where his boot prints ended and tried to tug himself up onto dry land.  Two to five minutes.  How long had it been?

He kicked his feet hard but he could feel the exhaustion and sluggishness trying to drag him back down into the dark and empty abyss below.  He couldn’t get a grip in the snow and his fingers were so cold he wanted to cry.  He thought about calling out for help but ice had been shoveled into his lungs and it hurt to breathe.  He couldn’t imagine how it would feel if he tried to yell.

He bobbed down in the water and tried to spring back up, digging his elbows into the snow when they caught over the edge.  He used the leverage to tilt his torso up and out of the water.  His pulse was racing, beating a haywire rhythm out against his temple and he knew his blood pressure had to be sky high.  It was something that happened: cold shock leading to cardiac arrest.  Guess what else increased blood pressure and pulse rate and made your heart skip about at irregular beats?  You got it.  Adderall.  Which he’d been shoveling into his mouth like candy since last night.  It was a miracle he’d gotten this far.

Stiles carefully crept forward on his elbows, one at a time, making sure to dig them into the hard packed snow before he lifted himself another inch or so out of the water.  When he reached his thighs, he finally felt safe enough to roll away from the hole he’d made.  He shivered uncontrollably on the snow, everything in him sore.

“Least I’m not dead,” Stiles choked and the words scraped out of him.  His throat was raw and each breath in brought a surge of _coldest_ air until he thought he might be freezing from the inside out.  He’d gotten what he’d wanted out of it though.  His words weren’t slurred and he didn’t feel confused.  It could be worse then.

He wasn’t supposed to move, he could remember that much, but if he didn’t find a heat source he would die before it became an issue either way.  His muscles were rigid, frozen and aching and he wanted nothing more than to lie on the snow and wait for a rescue.  The trouble was: no one came out this way, not even Derek.  There were no trails, no roads, no game.  There was nothing except the peace and quiet he had been after only minutes ago.

He had done his part and gotten out of the water and now all he wanted was to rest, to wake up and not feel like his insides were frozen and his head was pounding and his limbs were impossible to lift.  He closed his eyes and nearly gave in, gave up, opened his mouth and let the water hit when he realized he _would_ die if he did that – there was no question of _if_ anymore – and he wasn’t selfish enough to take the easy way out.

He struggled to sit up and cursed himself for wearing cotton _everything_.  It weighed him down and he couldn’t remember if he was meant to take off his waterlogged clothes if he didn’t have anything dry to replace them with.  It was an effort to stand, his muscles protesting at every twitch while he shivered and shook, and his head throbbed as he swayed upright.  It was fuzzy with cold and he knew he had to make a fire.

He took slow, purposeful steps.  Any wood was buried and unusable, soaked through until its insides were damp.  Stiles shuffled back the way he’d come at an agonizing pace, trying not to jar his system.  His feet squished in his boots with each step and he couldn’t feel his toes.  He looked around the roots of trees and under large branches for anything untouched by the near two-feet of snow while his fingers trembled and made everything they held jump about.  He came to one of the logs he’d stepped over on his way and found a mess of fallen branches buried under it and the snow.  It had soaked through the first layer, but down below was dry enough for kindling and moss for tinder.

Stiles fell back against the tree.  He couldn’t risk trying to find shelter without an infusion of heat and the snow was too deep to dig through to the ground floor.  He tamped down on the surface with his boot but his leg was so heavy and he was so tired and he could feel the ice creeping up to take him down again.  It was like looking at a weeping angel, now that he’d been down below, he’d become frozen just like the lake was.  He made sure the snow on top was hard packed.  It was slow going because he would lean back against the fallen log to rest when his breaths started to come in too sharp and he felt like sobbing at how heavy his arms had become.

Sometime during the digging, the shivering had stopped and he no longer felt cold.  Two very sure signs that he was in the grips of hypothermia.

He built his fire pit, arranged the kindling like a teepee and placed the moss underneath.  He tried to use a longer stick and rub it into his base wood, spinning the tip into its side but nothing happened and he was so tired.  He felt a sob burble up in his throat as he realized it was never going to spark.  He couldn’t feel the cold but he could feel how difficult it was making controlling his body.  He didn’t want to move anymore, he didn’t want to do anything but close his eyes and wake up in his bedroom.

Breath stuttered in his chest painfully as his tears caught there and he held out his hand towards the wood, thinking, _I believe this can catch fire.  I believe this **will** catch fire_.  Stiles kept up the mantra, mouthing it as he let it grow stronger inside him, willing it to catch, willing it to flare to life, willing himself to give his belief form.  No smoke hit his nostrils, no wood crackled and Stiles choked on a broken sound in his throat.  _I **need** this to catch fire.  I’m going to die if this doesn’t catch fire.  I’m going to die.  I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die_.

Stiles opened his eyes to a dry pile of sticks and a complete sense of hopelessness.  There was nothing more to do now.  He couldn’t remember any more of the documentary, he didn’t have any resources, he didn’t have any chance of being found.  He leaned back against the fallen tree trunk and tried not to think, tried not to let his despair overwhelm him.  If nothing else, crying would only make his head feel like it was stuffed with fluff and his sinuses throb.  He stayed still for so long that he was sure if someone did happen upon him, he’d already look dead.  He followed the thread of that thought and realized that the person who found him would probably be his dad and Stiles would just be sitting there, frozen without a fight.  His resolve strengthened.

He felt around in his pockets and pulled out everything he could find.  His wallet.  He instantly shoved that back into his jeans’ pocket.  _Easier to identify that way_ , was the grim – albeit practical – thought that followed its discovery.  His phone, there were bubbles under the glass and it didn’t even give a cursory attempt at turning on – the metal case had done zilch to protect it.  A wet receipt from a gas station, a half a stick of gum still in the wrapper, soggy pocket lint and a penny.  He delved his hand into his hoodie.  He hadn’t worn it since the Christmas he’d received it from his aunt-with-horrible-fashion-taste and that had only been to appease her.  He was only in it now because all the rest of his winter-appropriate gear was dirty or damaged from the werewolf shenanigans that had taken over his life.

He pulled out a nine-volt battery from one of the pockets and stared at it.  He couldn’t for the life of him think of why he would have a nine-volt battery.  Then he remembered.  His dad had gotten him one of those top of the line alarm clocks for Christmas that basically did everything but reach out a hand and slap you in the face to get you up.  Stiles had taken the battery out of it and said it hadn’t come with one so his dad would be forced to make another trip before Stiles actually had to use it.  He’d promptly broken it within a month of getting it and it had even been mostly not on purpose.

He was tempted to throw it – all of it, his endlessly useless junk – as far as he could in defeat.  Only knowing that it would exhaust him, and achieve nothing in the process, stopped him doing it.  He leaned back again and sniffed, his possessions – save his wallet – laid out in front of him in a neat line.  Behind it was the dry fire pit that wasn’t really a pit and didn’t have any fire.  He was a lesson in failure, Stiles thought to himself with a snort that broke into a sniffle before it finished.  He felt pathetic and sad and he really didn’t want to die out in the woods.

He didn’t want to make his dad look for him, to let him have hope that he was alive until he stumbled on Stiles’s icy body.  It wasn’t fair to him.  Stiles jerked upright, regretting it instantly when everything in him _ached_ at the abrupt movement.  He grabbed his phone between numb fingers and grappled ineffectually with the case.  Spikes of pain shot up his fingertips at the pressure of its edges digging in but he couldn’t truly feel it, which was why he couldn’t grip it.  He tugged and pulled and was about to use his teeth when it finally popped off.

He picked up the battery and dragged the metal edge of the case against the terminals.  It barely took him three tries before the end was sparking up.  He held it up to the moss and blew through the teepee’s center as the spark caught.  It was slow going but Stiles prodded and poked until the fire was dancing happily in its makeshift grate, the warm blast of air coming from it just about the best thing he had ever felt.  He shrugged out of his hoodie, knocked the snow off the log next to his head with slow, broad sweeps of his forearm and stretched it out over the wood to dry.  He piled on a few more sticks, careful not to add too many as he hadn’t gathered a surplus.  He’d been too tired, too cold, to go looking for another patch of snow that was hiding dry wood underneath.

He leaned back, heat beating against his face and shins, and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Stiles woke to an ominous feeling prickling the hair on the back of his neck.  A shadow was moving just outside the ring of his fire.  It was near to dying out and Stiles could see the shape stalking the edges of the light as though it couldn’t move inside it.  Red eyes flashed below the line of a fallen branch that was caught between the snow and a tree trunk and Stiles felt terror clawing its way up his throat.

He leaned forward, his movements guarded, and stoked the fire.  He added a few branches after snapping them in half to make sure the insides were as dry as the outsides looked.  The popping sounds of the sticks breaking in two filled the woods and swallowed up the crackling of the fire.  In between breaking the third and fourth branch, a snarl ripped through the quiet.  Stiles’s breath caught at the sound, his teeth coming together in a squeak.  It wasn’t Derek.

Derek wouldn’t have let him sleep, wouldn’t have stayed passive, wouldn’t have just _watched_.  But it _was_ an Alpha.  Stiles would bet it wasn’t just any Alpha but an Alpha from the Alpha pack.

He grabbed his hoodie up off the log and pulled it on with fumbling fingers.  It was damp but still managed to be a blessed shot of warmth as it slid over his shoulders.  His dexterity was shot and it took him a full minute of grappling with his zipper before he managed to pull it up.  He wondered how long it was meant to take before the heat from the fire should’ve fixed the numbness.  He wondered when it wasn’t a waiting game anymore, when it was permanent.

The hulking shadow twined through the trees and Stiles could hear its muffled footfalls padding through the snow, its fur brushing audibly against bark, its jaws snapping as it scented the air.  He wondered what he would smell like to a wolf now.  If it could smell death on him the way people said dogs could sometimes.

He closed his eyes again.  If the Alpha wanted to rip his throat out then Stiles felt sure it would only be speeding things along by a few hours.

 

* * *

 

The wolf was still there, sitting across from him on the other side of the fire when he opened his eyes.  Stiles had never been so terrified in all his life.  The wolf watched him, unwavering.  There was no blinking or shifting or even breathing it seemed.  Its ears didn’t even prick when a clump of snow fell from a nearby tree with a soft _thwuck_.  Its gaze stayed trained on him, watching each struggling rise and fall of his chest, watching the fear crystallize in his amber-colored eyes, watching as the tips of his fingers turned blue.  It just sat on its hind legs and stared.  Stared and waited.  Stiles didn’t know what it was waiting for, or waiting out as the case may have been, if it was waiting out his life force, waiting out his fire, _waiting waiting waiting_.  For what?  Stiles wanted to know.

“What are you waiting for?” Stiles screamed at it and his voice twisted through his insides, came out hoarse and broken up with huffy little intakes of air because he didn’t have any left in him and he couldn’t get in a deep pull.  It came in too cold then, too sharp, like a knife to his ribs.

The wolf smiled.

 

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t stay there.  Not with the wolf watching him, staring _inside_ him and into his head.  He snatched up his wet gas station receipt, his phone, his case, his battery, his half a stick of gum, his penny, his life in a few measly possessions and looked for shelter when dawn came.  He didn’t put out his fire, instead choosing to let it burn itself out.  If it started a forest fire at least it might get him found.  He couldn’t actively cause one, but he felt all right with the passive responsibility.

He took a makeshift torch with him.  It burned out before he’d even gotten out of sight of the dwindling flames.  He’d expected it though and he continued his slow walk knowing he could at least make another.  He wrapped his arms around his torso, lowered his face against the slight headwind and walked.  He kept the same direction, at least enough that he knew he wasn’t going around in circles and dug up firewood when he came upon it.  Sometimes he curled his fingers into the snow and came away with nothing but most times he judged it pretty well and came away with a respectable bundle.

He felt like he’d been walking for hours, his feet uncomfortable in his boots.  He was afraid to take them off and look, afraid he’d find his toes were black under those boots.  He was tired all the time, his body one massive plea of: shut down, reboot, start over.  Only Stiles knew the more times he shut down, the less opportunities he had for the reboot.

There was ice in his chest, in his lungs and it didn’t stop kicking up with every breath.  Tears tracked down his cheeks, sobs catching in his throat, making him have to breathe more often and inhale shallow, stuttering little gulps of air.  He wanted to stop, it made his head pound harder, his chest feel tighter, but _everything_ hurt and nothing was easy, not even walking, and he just wanted to stop.  To stop and cry and let the water hit.

And the wolf was following him, his constant companion.  He would catch a glimpse of it from his periphery every few minutes, winding through the trees, kicking up the snow.  It was stalking him like prey and Stiles wanted to yell at it, tell it to get on with it already but he was afraid of seeing that smile again.  It had made his heart thump to see it and it had leached something away from him, something warm, something like hope, something that told him he might make it through this.

His head was spinning and his feet were mostly dragging through the snow when he found the cliff-side.  He let his hand drag against the frosted outcroppings, the rough rock slicing into his palm on occasion without his knowledge.  It didn’t bleed and he couldn’t feel it.  He was afraid he might lose consciousness and he didn’t want to let go of this _solid_ landmark.  He followed it until all he could remember of his time out in the woods was falling through the ice and following the rock around.  He found a fissure in the crag, only slightly bigger than his body, its ceiling extended out past its floor and far back there was barely a light dusting of snow, protected as it was from the elements.

Stiles let out a whoop of joy and settled into the back of it, dropped the bundle of sticks from under his arm and set to work making his fire.  He managed it before he passed out but only just.

He came to, slowly.  His fire was still crackling merrily so he couldn’t have been out for long.  He sat up and arched his back away from the rock that was digging into it.  He turned around to move it out from behind him.  He spun back and held his hands out in front of him towards the fire.  His eyes shifted to the side and he let out a yelp that burned in his chest.

A man was sitting near him, mirroring his position of holding out his hands to the flames.  He was older than Stiles but young still, twenty-six maybe.  Firelight danced across his face, deepened the shadows under his whiskey dark eyes, glinted in the whiskers and frost of his auburn beard but it couldn’t reach his short, scruffy hair.  He leaned forward, elbows on jean-clad knees, and his polyester vest squeaked.  It was one of those vests hunters often wore, fluffy-turned-flat from wear and a faded navy blue.  Underneath it was a plaid shirt and a white Henley.  It was a lot like what Stiles was wearing.  Ill-suited to the weather.

“Who are you?”  It still hurt to speak, like the words clenched his heart in their fist while he said them.  Only when they stopped could he breathe in again.

The man’s lips quirked in a fond smile that was directed at the fire rather than Stiles himself and Stiles saw a shotgun was leaning up against the stone behind him.  He noticed where Stiles’s gaze was focused.  “It’s not for you, Stiles,” he said and his voice was friendly, warm when precious little else was.  “There’s beasties out there,” he nodded his head towards the mouth of Stiles’s fissure, “I think you know that.”  He followed the last of it up with a wink.

“The wolf,” Stiles gasped out before he could stop himself.

The man nodded.  “It’s coming after you.”

Stiles swallowed.  “I know.  It followed me here.”  He looked out where daylight was filtering in through the opening.  “What does it want?”

The man shrugged, rubbed his palms together.  “Does it matter?”  He cocked his head toward the gun in the corner.  “You’re safe enough now.”

Stiles drew up his knees and wrapped his arms around them.  He didn’t mean to say it aloud but he found himself whispering softly, “Am I?”

 

* * *

 

The man was still there when he opened his eyes again.  Dave, he had said Stiles could call him when Stiles was half asleep and the glow of the firelight was all he could see, shrugging it off like it was an answer that changed with the days.  The fire was just as strong but the woodpile was not quite as large as it’d been before he’d fallen to unconsciousness.

As far as Stiles could tell, Dave hadn’t moved.  “I don’t know I’m supposed to sleep so much.”  Dave blinked at him, like he was only just remembering Stiles was there.  “I feel like each time I close my eyes, it gets less likely I’ll open them again.”  Stiles dragged cold fingers down his warm face.  “But everything hurts so much.  My eyes ache in their sockets, it’s hard to even lift up my tongue to tell you this and there’s ice in my chest that won’t go away.  I don’t particularly want to stay awake through all that.”

“Yet you’re still fighting.”

Stiles pushed down a yawn.  “Death doesn’t happen to you.  It happens to everyone around you.”  Stiles’s shoulders shook.  “The people around me have dealt with too much death.”

Dave squinted at him through the tips of the dancing flames.  “You think it’s better to live for them than to let yourself off the hook?”

Stiles shrugged.  “Isn’t it?”  His eyes had fallen closed again.  It was such an _effort_ to keep them open.

“It’s all right to let go, Stiles.”

Stiles lost grip of consciousness and let himself fall away into the blackness again, into the cold and floating dream space under the ice.

 

* * *

 

“We’re nearly out of firewood.”  Stiles yawned, trying to fake a shiver.  He knew he was meant to be doing that, shivering to keep up his body heat but his body had given up on that.  Had given up on all of it, it seemed.  Dave grunted to acknowledge Stiles had spoken but didn’t offer up anything else.  Stiles was fairly certain he was an hallucination now.  He’d suspected it when he’d first popped up and it was easing into a certainty.  What would anyone else be doing out here, alone and not dressed for the weather?  And _why_ would they stay with a half-frozen boy instead of getting help?  Logic said he wasn’t real and Stiles didn’t know how much longer he’d have a hold on that.  His words were starting to drift into one another as it was and he was starting to think, _I’ll be fine.  I’m not even cold anymore.  I’ll be back home before long_.

Hypothermia was making Swiss cheese of his common sense.

He started laughing, laughing until tears slid down his face and Dave didn’t even glance up.  “I don’t know if I’m supposed to move.”  Stiles laughed, cried, dragged in an unsteady breath that stuck in his chest.  “I don’t know if I should let the water hit.”

Dave was frowning over the fire.  “Sometimes it’s not your choice.  Sometimes the water pours in and there’s nothing to be done for it.”

“You can always fight harder.”

Dave huffed out an amused breath.  “What do they tell you when you fall into the ice?”  Stiles looked up at him, watched the shadows twist over his face.  “Not to struggle, not to panic, not to fight.”  And the only way Dave knew that, knew that Stiles knew it too, was if he was dreamed up from Stiles’s brain.

Stiles laid down on his side, let the fire burn into the backs of his eyelids.  He didn’t sleep but drifted in and out of a light doze.  Dave didn’t make a sound, no human shuffling or hitches in breathing because Stiles’s subconscious was good but it wasn’t _that_ good.

 

* * *

 

“Why were you out here alone?” Dave asked when it was quiet enough that they could hear the wolf prowling just outside, snuffling down at the snow and snarling into their enclosure.

Stiles opened his eyes and everything fuzzed around the edges, like his world was narrowing down to a gray pinpoint.  The ice was crawling its way across his vision, he’d been under the ice and the ice was in him now.  _He was becoming a weeping angel_ , he thought with a snort.  His mind dragged itself back to the question, wrapped around it and tried to push everything related to it towards answering.  His memories were listless and jagged but he remembered the set of Derek’s jaw, the fingers curling around his forearm.  “There’s a pack I’m part of.”  Stiles pushed himself upright with a shaky arm, rested his cheek on his knee.  “A pack I _want_ to be part of but they want to shield me from all the hard stuff, all the bad stuff.”

Dave grinned.

Stiles’s head throbbed in time with the flash of firelight off his teeth.  He squinted into the pain.  “Yeah,” he said, a huff of breath breaking free from him.  “This should prove the bad stuff finds you no matter how careful you are, hunts you down like prey.”  The wolf’s growls reverberated through their fissure.

Dave looked up, caught his eye.  “That doesn’t explain why you’re _here_.”

Stiles shook his head.  It didn’t, did it?  Why was he here?  “I walked out on them.”  He rubbed at his forehead like he was trying to sand it down, trying to build up the fractured pieces in his mind into memory and words and _meaning_.  “I didn’t take the time to explain…”  He could remember the confusion mingled with apology and hardness on Derek’s face.  He’d only wanted to protect Stiles, to keep him safe and cocooned in the warmth of that security.  Stiles would give anything to feel that warmth now.  Derek couldn’t lose him, _shouldn’t_ lose him.  That was why he’d wanted to keep him so far away from things.  They _were_ something, something unspoken but omnipresent and growing and visible to anyone who looked long enough.  He didn’t know what had kept it unspoken.  If it was because he was seventeen or because Derek was terrified of feeling things again, because _Stiles_ was terrified of what it might mean to care for someone who breathed life and death situations.  But they’d never come out and said it.  That it was there, that no matter what else happened they both knew where things were leading for them.  All paths converged on the same destination when it came to them and they both knew it even if they couldn’t acknowledge it.

He and Scott had talked about it once, cryptically and all too briefly, but it had let Stiles know that it wasn’t just he and Derek who were in on the open secret of _them_.  He was going to die and Derek was going to have to go through the loss all over again and it wasn’t fair to him.  It wasn’t _fair_.  What kind of cosmic order was there to the universe when Derek just kept losing everything he cared about over and over again until the end of time?  Stiles shouldn’t have to be something Derek had to _survive_.  He couldn’t be another thing that happened _to_ Derek.  He was supposed to be a strength, not another weakness.

He wished in that moment that there was nothing between them.  That Stiles was still the scared teenager who quaked when Derek bared his teeth and that Derek still thought of him as nothing more than an annoying remora that had attached itself to Scott, that Derek wouldn’t _care_ when he found Stiles stiff and blue and gone.

Stiles’s crying got so bad that his breaths started to hitch and his chest burned against it, begged him to stop so it could catch and hold onto air but he couldn’t and the pain climbed up and up until his vision started to blur and white spots danced back and forth.  “I k-know it was coming from a good place.”  He did.  He _did_.  He knew Derek had meant well, had _cared_ when he shouldn’t have.  A laugh wound its way through his tears.  “Even if it was patronizing as hell.”  He swiped cold from his face and leaned it closer to the fire, laughing.  “I’m not weak.  This proves it, doesn’t it?  I’m still here.  I’m _still_ here.  Maybe not for much longer but I’m here, _here_ , when maybe I shouldn’t be.”

Dave was watching him, wary, like he was keeping eye on a wild animal.  “You’re not weak,” he agreed, cautious tenseness to the words.  He held up his hands.  “I don’t think any of them were calling you it either.”

Stiles snorted.  No, they hadn’t _meant_ to be calling him weak but they _had been_.

Dave lowered his hands and rubbed a palm against his thigh.  “I think they were saying _they’d_ be weak without you, should something happen to you.”

Stiles flashed back to the earnestness on Scott’s face, the pain underlying the words, _‘I don’t want you hurt,’_ as though he was remembering every time Stiles had been.  There were so many people that would suffer because of this, because he’d had to prove that he could run with wolves.  He wondered if this was better somehow though.  He knew if he’d let them have their way, if he’d been pushed out of everything that spelled trouble, that glacially – as all lasting changes come – he’d have been left out of their lives, abandoned for his own good.  At least this way, he didn’t have to be outside looking in the way he always seemed to be.  He wouldn’t have to watch them be pack while he struggled through a normal existence alone.

“I was right,” Stiles choked out.  Because he was and he clung to it because it meant _this_ , this wasn’t all his fault; that this wasn’t the worst, most selfish mistake he’d ever made.  A firm grip slid over the ball of his shoulder and squeezed.  Dave’s sober brown eyes checked the pride in Stiles’s own.  Stiles buried his face in his hands and his shoulders hitched.  “I shouldn’t have left,” he said, his voice bottoming out into a low and hollow sort of tone.

“No,” Dave said and the fingers squeezed again.  “I don’t think you should have.”

The wolf took a step inside, blocking their way out as it watched them.

 

* * *

 

Stiles was delirious.  He had been for half a day now.  Dave still answered him, spoke to him, like he was making perfect sense but memories were blurring together, shifting into the present, plunging him into the past.  He waved away a hand that wasn’t there while his fever climbed and he sweat through his clothes.  He wasn’t sweating, he wasn’t feverish, he wasn’t shaking.  His fingertips were turning black and his arms were too heavy to lift and his head weighed down his neck so it ached _all the time_.  But his mother was there, checking his temperature, trying to make him eat soup while he pulled the covers over his head, not knowing how lucky he was, not knowing that this time next year he would give _anything_ to see his mom’s face.

“No soup,” Stiles mumbled, “’s too hot.”

He slipped on the ice, sunk beneath the water like an anchor.  It was dark and black and he was floating in the icy abyss.  He was alone, so very alone, a speck of _something_ in a sea of _nothing_. The weightlessness would almost be nice if his head didn’t feel like it was about to pop and his chest didn’t _burn_ every second he spent beneath the ice. He imagined pulling back and back and back but all he could see was snow on top of ice and black beneath it with a momentary blip of _Stiles_ breaking up the monochrome.

He floated and he drowned and he drowned and he drowned.

Dave stoked the fire and set his jaw and Stiles knew, in some buried place in his brain, shoveled under ice and snow, that this was bad.  This was when bad didn’t get better.

Hours later, he sat up, out of his dad’s cruiser, out of Scott’s bedroom, out of Derek’s burned-out shell of a home and back to their crack in the mountainside.  His mind was as clear as it had ever been and things _made sense_ in a way they never really had.  “I’m going to die,” he told Dave, matter-of-fact, and it wasn’t something to fight or argue or run from because it was simply _going_ to happen.  There was no way of getting around something that felt so certain that it might as well have already come to pass.

Dave grunted and nodded and poked at the fire and didn’t look up at him.  Stiles figured that was fair enough.  He wouldn’t want to be here alone either, or unimagined as the case may have been.

It was the last truly sound moment Stiles had.

 

* * *

 

Stiles tugged the fur-lined hood up around his face and buried his nose against his knee.  Dave was watching him and his eyes looked wet the way the light from the fire danced over them.  Stiles scooted forward.  He was so close to the flames now that he was almost sitting in them.  He should’ve been found by now.  The skin under his eyes was gray and hollow and his stomach was growling loud enough to rival the wolf.  The wolf that was now sitting across from him on the other side of the fire, waiting and smiling and knowing.  Stiles didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d left Derek’s.  It felt long.  He knew at least two days had passed and he thought, realistically, the feel of being out in the cold for a week probably only translated into three full days.

“I’m friends with werewolves,” Stiles told Dave, who flickered with the fire, and the wolf stood.  One leg shifted forward like it was preparing to pounce and the smile grew into a grin, tongue lolling out.  Stiles coughed and his voice sounded strange and looped and he tried to pull back into himself.  “They should’ve found me by now,” he said weakly and Dave was back, solid, and looking grim.  “They can smell… smell _everything_ , you know?”  Why was this so hard to explain?  “They should’ve smelled me, found me.”

Some dam broke open inside of him as he _finally_ voiced what had been plaguing him, because they _should_ have found him by now and the only explanation was that they weren’t _looking_.  “Why don’t they _care_ that I’m not there?” Stiles tried to scream but his voice was too weak for it, too reedy and broken with breath.  “ _This_ is why they were trying to push me out.  It wasn’t because they wanted me safe, it wasn’t because they’d break if I broke,” Stiles glared at Dave, “It was because they didn’t want me, because they didn’t _care_.”

The wolf advanced, through the flames, licked its chops and grinned at him while red eyes danced above the fire.

“I read it all wrong,” Stiles said, a snort coiling around the words.  He shook his head.  “I thought.  Derek—Derek, he.  I thought he—”

“He does.”  Dave's eyes were sad.  He was stripping one of their sticks into long strings with his hands.  He stared down at his fingers, his gaze intense and focused.  “You do too.”

Stiles _had_ thought he knew what it meant when their eyes found each other’s across a room.  He was sure, somewhere deep, Derek knew it too.  “He wouldn’t leave me to this, would he?”  The question was a rhetorical one and Dave knew it.  “He wouldn’t _stop_ looking.  I know him, he wouldn’t stop.”

The wolf stepped back but the smile didn’t fade.  Dave leaned forward, placed a hand on his knee.  “He wouldn’t stop,” he agreed and it was a statement of fact and nothing more, nothing reassuring or said for comfort.  It was what _was_.

“He knows my heartbeat.” Stiles rubbed at his eyes, knowing it was true because Derek had accidentally admitted as much after saving him from a modern day siren at Jungle – that his was the first heartbeat Derek heard in a crowd.  Derek had told him, the tips of his ears burning red, and Stiles’s eyes had widened before he laughed it off and sang the hook to ‘ _Super Bass’_ to lighten the tension.  He wished he’d taken the opportunity he saw it was now.  “He knows my scent.”  Stiles was sure of that too.  “He would find me,” Stiles said, voice winding down, sure about something for the first time in so long.  He blinked slow, his eyes staying closed for longer and longer beats of time.  Dave shook his knee and Stiles came to, alertness momentarily shocking its way through him.  Derek wouldn’t let things lie.  He would be chasing the slightest whiff of Stiles’s scent through the trees.  He would smell the water from the lake, would find his footprints, his fire, and he would be able to smell the smoke from this one.  It was only a matter of time.  It _should have_ only been a matter of time.  Derek wouldn’t have stopped for anything.  So… so… “ _Why_ hasn’t he found me yet?” Stiles exploded, his chin trembling as he held back another wave of tears.

“Stiles.”  Stiles looked up to find the wolf was gone and there was a grave expression on Dave’s face. His mouth curled down into a frown and he said, “He has found you.”

Stiles’s eyes widened and flew to the mouth of their cave but Derek wasn’t there, nothing was there but a too bright light that was the sun’s rays beating back off the white of the snow.  Stiles frowned too.  “What are you talking about?”  He’d thought he was too frozen to feel hope.  Now he knew he could feel that and disappointment.

Dave held his eyes and told him unflinchingly, “You didn’t make it out of the ice.”

Stiles’s first instinct was to laugh.  He could still _feel_ his not-panicking panicking, the pain in his arms from when he’d hauled himself out of the ice, the intense effort it’d taken to roll away from the hole, the ice trying to drag him down while he kicked out against it, the twinges of his muscles as he’d struggled against the water, the numbness of his fingers as he’d clawed against the snow for a grip.  His subconscious was good but it wasn’t _that_ good.

He scoffed at Dave but his expression was so intense, so open and honest that Stiles felt fear burble up in him.  “Y-you’re lying,” he said weakly.

“You inhaled when the ice broke,” Dave said and Stiles could remember it.  They called it a torso reflex.  You couldn’t help it when you hit the cold like that, “and you swallowed a mouthful of water.”  He could remember that too, the water hitting the back of his throat and freezing its way down, turning him to ice from the inside out.  “The combination of the cold and your pills stopped your heart.”  He remembered stiffening, feeling like he’d been slammed in the chest by a wrecking ball, like his heart was pinched by an arrow.  “It was only for a moment but it was enough for you to get pulled down so far that you couldn’t kick your way back up.”

 _Cold shock leading to cardiac arrest_.

“You drowned there beneath the ice.”  Stiles stared up at him, his eyes searching Dave’s face, lost and broken.  Dave pushed forward and said fiercely, “You drowned and it wasn’t because you _stopped_ fighting, it wasn’t because you _let_ the water hit.”

Stiles shook his head over and over again.  “I don’t believe you.”  He couldn’t.  He _couldn’t_.

Dave let out a long sigh and nodded once, like he’d expected nothing more.  “Let me show you.”  Dave’s hand settled gently over his knee and then Stiles was looking at himself.  His lips were blue and his limbs were bloated and swollen.  His back was resting on the snow next to the hole he’d fallen through, he could see fragile bits of ice around the edges of it where it had started to re-glass after he’d cracked its surface.  His legs still dangled over in the water.

His body hadn’t taken a breath in hours, his heart hadn’t beat and his pulse hadn’t raced.  He was dead.  And it felt long dead even though it couldn’t have been, not for his body to be so well preserved.  He supposed everything felt long dead once it was over and official and done.

A clawed hand clamped down on the snow by his thigh and then Derek was pulling himself out of the water, dripping wet, in nothing more than a black wifebeater and jeans.  He’d been wearing it at the pack meeting.  He wondered if Derek had realized he’d been gone too long, that he hadn’t gotten home yet, that he wasn’t answering his phone, and ran after him without even stopping to grab a jacket.  Derek’s eyes were flashing red and he pulled Stiles away from the break in the ice by the scruff of his neck until he was out of the water completely.

The claws slammed down into the snow by his head and Derek knelt over him, his face furring and smoothing, his fangs growing and retracting.  He touched the side of Stiles’s face, careful to keep his lengthening and shortening nails from scraping his skin.  He treated the handling of him like Stiles was something precious, something still capable of feeling pain.  Stiles watched the break happen in Derek, he saw something _fracture_ that had only just begun to heal and Derek howled.  It was such a _wrecked_ thing that Stiles covered his ears against the sound.  “Stiles,” Derek said and it was soft and prodding, said _because_ it was searching for a response.  “Don’t,” was all he said.  Stiles had a feeling it was all he could bring himself _to_ say.

Stiles watched Derek leaning over him, his body tense and poised, wolf-like in its pose, and Stiles could see the deep dark depths of everything Derek felt for him in those blue-rimmed-green eyes.  He looked as if he would plunge his claws into his own chest and take whatever made his broken and cracked self work and thrust it into Stiles without a second thought.  Stiles knelt down on the other side of his body, feeling like an intruder to Derek’s mourning.  Derek picked up his swollen fingers, shuffled his own between them.  “Please, don’t— _please_.”

Derek’s eyes were dry as bone and he kept swallowing convulsively and Stiles could tell he was spiraling down into this, into the idea that Stiles was dead and the reality that he was going to have to call people, tell his father, get back up and _move on_.  Derek’s hand tightened around his so hard that he could hear bones snapping.  Anger was there now, amongst all the grief.  “Derek,” Stiles said softly, trying to reach out a hand for him, to stop him breaking Stiles’s.  “Derek, stop.”  Derek didn’t stop.  He stared down into Stiles’s dead eyes, the sheen from them gone, the life in them extinguished, with something that looked a lot like betrayal.  Something that looked like it might be nosing into hatred and Stiles knew that one wasn’t for him.  “This isn’t your fault,” Stiles told him, his eyes filling with pain.  “Don’t take this on too.”

Branches broke in the distance and Stiles could hear labored breathing coming up on them.  Derek didn’t raise his eyes from Stiles’s empty ones.  His strong grip broke around Stiles’s hand and gentled.  He held it up under his chin and smoothed his free hand down Stiles’s arm, pushing back the sleeve of his hoodie.

Scott broke out into their clearing.  “Derek, did you—” ‘ _find him_ ’ dried up in his throat and Scott’s knees just _buckled_ and he slammed down into the snow.  Stiles wasn’t handsome in death.  He was gruesome and gross and soon he was sure he would be nothing more than a cautionary tale about clumsiness and emotions on high.  “No.”  Scott shook his head and then he just didn’t stop saying it.  “No, no, no, no, no.”  Until it was just noise, a litany of denial in Stiles’s head.

The rest of them came panting within minutes of each other.  Allison’s hand flew to her mouth as she choked on a gasp, her eyes filling with water the same way it’d filled Stiles’s mouth.  She clamped down on it hard as she shifted to stand behind Scott, not quite touching him but a solid presence nonetheless.  Erica froze, tensed, stiffened.  She threw her shoulders back and stood up taller like it couldn’t affect her.  She forced herself to stare at Stiles’s body.  She didn’t so much as blink and Stiles could practically hear her thinking, ‘ _This won’t break me.   I’m strong now, strong enough to face public humiliation, strong enough to survive a seizure in an elevator by myself, strong enough to stare into his dead eyes and not let it kill a part of me too_.’

Boyd didn’t have much of a reaction so far as Stiles could tell, aside from an unholy tightening of the muscles in his jaw.  Isaac stared just as Erica had and his eyes flicked between Stiles’s and Derek’s faces before flickering over to Scott’s curled back.  He was rocking back and forth now on his knees while he chanted out his mantra of, ‘ _no_.’  Lydia was the only one who turned away, buried her face in Jackson’s chest while he looked on with wide eyes, stark with disbelief.

Derek still stared down into Stiles’s blank face, stroking up and down his arm as though trying to bring warmth back to it.  He was lost in a loop now, a loop where he was still ‘finding’ Stiles rather than having ‘found’ him.  “Derek.”  Stiles reached out again, the instinct to touch him, to break him out of this too strong to combat the reality that he couldn’t.  “Let me go.”  Stiles swallowed and said truthfully, “It’s okay to let me go now.”

Derek’s hand tightened again and Stiles heard bones creak.  Lydia was at his side in an instant, pushing Derek back before he could stop her.  He fell back, wolfing out and growling at her like he meant to tear her to pieces.  Lydia looked just as fierce, protecting Stiles as she knelt down and brushed a hand over his shaved hair.  Derek watched her, red eyes following every twitch of her fingers.

Dave took a step forward and Stiles jumped, remembering him for the first time since they’d left the fissure.  Stiles shrugged a shoulder towards Derek.  “He’ll take this on too.”  It wasn’t a question but Stiles looked to Dave for an answer anyway.

Dave glanced at Stiles through his lashes.  He frowned and his lips made a smacking sound when they drew apart.  They’d been closed so long and so intently that they’d cemented together a bit.  “You know him better than I do, Stiles,” he said, leveling him with a long look.

Stiles lowered his eyes, staring down at the black tips of his fingers as he wiggled them.  A tear dropped onto his nail.  Derek would.  Stiles knew he would.  He would keep this with him, let it grow into his insides until it was essential to him, until it _became_ him.  Just like he did with the fire.  He would suffer through another agony, a guy immune to morphine.

Dave placed a hand on his shoulder the same way he had done in the cave, like nothing had changed, like he was still _real_. Stiles didn’t feel real anymore.  He raised an auburn brow and asked without pushing, “Are you ready to come with me now?”

Stiles let out a shallow exhale and squinted up into Dave’s kindly features.  “You’re Death?”  He supposed that was clear enough now but his curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied until it was said out loud.

Dave’s lips tilted into an amused half-smile.  “I’m a guide,” he said, “here to ease the transition.”  He adjusted the strap of his shotgun over his shoulder, hefting it further onto his back.  “I’ll take you where you need to go, Stiles.”

Stiles stood up to meet him.  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Dave’s hand squeezed his shoulder.  “You had to accept it first.”  His gaze shifted over to the break in the ice.  “The human brain can conjure all kinds of tricks to keep us from truths that are too harsh to know.”

“And the wolf?” Stiles asked.

Dave’s expression darkened into something malevolent for the first time since Stiles had met him and his fingers dug into Stiles’s skin.  “It means to keep you here, keep you confused and focused on it rather than what’s happened to you.  It wants to drag you down with it.”

Stiles looked over at where the water lapped against the snow and ice.  “Down into the black,” he said with a shiver.

“Let go.”  Stiles startled as he refocused on Lydia.  She was glaring at the place where Derek’s clawed hand had curled around Stiles’s ankle.  She reiterated, harsher this time, “Derek, let go of him.”  Her eyes were glowing and she held up a tube of lipstick like it was an answer to a question no one had thought to ask.  She leaned over Stiles’s body and pulled at the hem of his shirts, tugging upwards.  Derek sprung into action.  He _roared_ and lunged at her, landing on all fours over Stiles, using his body as a cage over the one underneath it.  Lydia hissed and snatched at her forearm and Stiles could see blood slipping between her fingers, down her elbow.  Derek had slashed her, a low growl rumbling in his chest as he watched her with gauging eyes, as though he expected she might make a move for something _his_ again.

Jackson was at her side in an instant, pushing her back by the shoulder as he dropped to Derek’s position and snarled, eyes gleaming beta-blue.  Lydia knocked him out of the way, looking more violent than he had.  “Get your fucking paws off him,” she snarled, eyes flashing.

Derek was more creature than man now, wolfed out to beta form.  Though he looked abashed as he scented Lydia’s blood, he didn’t move from his sentry position over Stiles’s corpse.

The anger seeped out of Lydia and exhaustion swept in to take its place.  Her voice was small when she used it next.  “Do you want to save him or not?”

Derek’s eyes shifted to the side, like he suspected a trap.  He backed away slowly, still poised to strike.

Lydia wrenched up Stiles’s shirts with only a low whine from Derek and used her lipstick to write on Stiles’s torso, on his blue-tinged skin.  The dark red smearing across the bloat of his stomach and chest painted an even more macabre picture.

Derek whined louder and tugged on Stiles’s ankle with weak, ineffectual motions like he meant to pull him away from her but some part of him knew better.

Lydia ignored him.  Sweat was beading on her brow and the sigil on Stiles’s still chest started to rearrange itself while Lydia chanted under her breath.

Stiles’s eyes flew back to Dave’s.  “There will be consequences for them,” he said through a harsh puff of air.  He squinted up at Dave.  “Won’t there?”

Dave smiled at him.  “There’s nothing to call you back from yet, no lines crossed.”  Stiles swallowed past the lump in his throat.  Dave said gently while Stiles stared down at his empty body and Lydia’s chanting rose to swallow even Scott’s, “It’s your choice now, Stiles.”

He could feel a pull behind his navel, a gentle tugging that was strong enough to lead but weak enough to break.  His own chest started to glow gold at the same time his lifeless body’s did.  The chanting was getting louder, more insistent, while Stiles teetered on the edge of something cavernous, a break so wide it could swallow him whole.  Locks were forming, ready to click into place and cement one path while it sealed off the other forever.  Soon they would be impenetrable, one way or another.

Stiles closed his eyes as he felt the warmth of the glow infuse him, loosening up his muscles and pushing the water out from his lungs while heat swept through him, skipping through his vessels and twining through every major organ.  He could breathe again and his whole back arched off the snow as he took in a pull of sharp, _cold_ air.  He gasped while his skin prickled and pinked and his heart started _thump, thump, thumping_ double time in his chest.  He felt better than he had in ages, all except for the throb of his hand where the broken pieces of bone made themselves known.

He groaned and raised his uninjured one to his forehead.

He felt the pads of cold, tentative, _clawless_ fingers touch his cheek and a voice hoarse and deep and hopeful, a voice that he would know anywhere, said:

“Stiles?”

**Author's Note:**

> PROMISED (spoiler-y) RESEARCH BLATHER/NOTES  
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> [1] I've likened Beacon Hills to Blue Canyon, California here, which gets tons of snow but, as in the story, it's close to record-breaking for it to get as cold as it does.
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> [2] The maximum safe dose of Adderall is considered to be 70mg so there is Adderall abuse depicted here. I mention a few of the actual side effects: dry mouth, headache, increase in blood pressure/pulse rate, irregular heart rate, difficulty breathing, chest pain, blurry or double vision, uncontrollable shaking, extreme nervousness or paranoid delusions (take those last few as you will *sly grin*).
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> [3] I've done massive amounts of research on falling through the ice, hypothermia, how to start fires without the usual suspects and in the snow (Stiles's method does work here - though I severely doubt as quickly - so if you ever find yourself alone in the woods with a nine-volt battery and in desperate need of a fire, do not despair). Though things naturally get exaggerated, timing gets fiddled with, etc., to fit the plot and there is some intentional manipulation of facts as well for reasons that should be clear by the end. ;)
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> [4] Stiles has seen a documentary on hypothermia because he strikes me as a kid that would internalize his trauma - especially as I doubt his father would have been much of a shoulder to lean on those first few months. I see him as getting morbidly obsessed with death (and all the ways it can happen) and using his new found knowledge to exaggerate the reality of his mother's to everyone who asks as a perfect defense mechanism. It both makes the person asking uncomfortable and entirely avoids the heart-rending truth. I think this is actually what led to Stiles's and Scott's friendship. I don't think Stiles could lie or 'gross-up' his mother's death to someone as innocent-looking (and with such effective puppy dog eyes) as Scott and so he became the only person Stiles could talk to about it. I have too much head-canon and back-story for this. ermahgerd.
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> [5] As it rubbed my beta the wrong way, I thought I should take the initiative to say: when Stiles refers to 'giving up' as taking 'the easy way out' - that's a character point-of-view comment, not my own. My own personal head-canon is that Stiles's mum had cancer and that she struggled to live through each day for him and his dad. I think anyone who intended or allowed their life to be shortened by even a minute when his mother had to cling to each breath would be completely unacceptable and abhorrent to Stiles, so he certainly wouldn't do so himself. This struggle - as you might have noticed - becomes a major theme of Stiles's journey.
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> [6] There are references to weeping angels from Who because Stiles strikes me as a Who man, also the parallels are so glaringly _there_ to be drawn. For those of you who don't understand that reference (all my Castiels) have no fear, it's not a major plot point. Essentially "that which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel."
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> [7] It's got to be the least werewolf-y concentrated fic written for werewolfbigbang. Ever. *headdesk*
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> TRIGGER WARNING
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> There is Major Character Death depicted here (though it's only temporary) as well as intense descriptions of falling through ice and the consequences of that.
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> THANK YOUS
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> DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT ART? I cannot even begin to express my massive amounts of awe over it and fuckyeah. Please leave her love [here](http://fuckyeah.livejournal.com/292298.html)!
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> I would like to thank queenie_mab for the thoughtful feedback, the subtle cheerleading and the word wars that helped me to finish this (early even!) even though she doesn't really "do" Teen Wolf. You are a true queen among paupers, my dear! *kisses*
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> Lady Slytherin, yeaka, and everyone else who hangs out in our chatzy who cheered me on to finishing and warred me endlessly!
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> My eternal gratitude to jonjo_keat for wrangling, taming and dominating this beast into submission - I owe you so much for slapping my fingers away from the keys when I tried to increase Scott's vocabulary, attempting to rehabilitate me through your _Italics Anonymous_ program (I still have my backslides), giving me further insight into how to write these characters and helping me with the repeats even I missed (I love you forever for that). You did everything I asked of you as a beta and more! Any remaining mistakes or wonky sentence structures are my own.
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> Also, I'm pretty sure the name Dave came from Crazy Dave from, um, *mumbles* Plants vs. Zombies. I would reward myself with levels of it when I finished a scene. In fact, the Dave I pictured kind of looks like a more attractive, less crazy version of Crazy Dave. Oh my god, my brain. *disappointed sigh*


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